wCyclone of Indifference We're all deviating from the same path wArchives: photos search the archives: cheers -- HOME -- wMine other sites: Idle Time The Pop Group Edge (languishing) Lupe links open new windows Technorati Profile wbe smart

Saturday, August 30, 2003 Ocean bound Taking off in a little while for Surf Fest on North Padre Island. Gulf of Mexico. Kayaking. Birding. Camping. That sort of thing. posted at 8:03 AM Wednesday, August 27, 2003 Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh Kookaburra: the Australian Laughing Jackass Don't click on this link if you're in a quiet place (or under the influence of hallucinogens). Unholy sounds of the Laughing Jackass. Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh (remember that song?). link via frizzylogic posted at 4:08 PM The Myoclonic Jerks I was searching for info on 'sleep starts' - when the body jerks just as you're falling asleep - and didn't even know how to search it at first. Sleep jolt? Sleep flinch? 'Jolt' got me to 'starts', which got me to myoclonic jerks (and hypnic jerks). I thought that would be a good name for a band. Googled it and found that The Myoclonic Jerks are the Stanford Neuroscience Softball Team. So, I guess it's still open for a band name. I was searching for info on sleep starts (or myoclonic jerks) because I did another session in the floatation (sensory deprivation) tank on Sunday. I was sleepy, so I was jerking quite a bit. Happened again in my Theta neurofeedback session yesterday. That's when I made a note to myself to look it up. It's normal - not a sleep disorder unless it's extreme - but it means, I guess, that I was no longer in Theta but drifting towards Delta. (?) As a side note: man, you really find some weird stuff when you search sleep-related stuff on the web; it's as if sleep disorders cause illiteracy, judging by some of the sleep disorder message boards. But, to be fair, I guess it's hard to spell check when you haven't slept in awhile. Discovery has a good description of the phenomenon... and an amusing graphic. posted at 10:40 AM Monday, August 25, 2003 177777.7 The odometer rolled over to a bunch of 7's on my way to work this morning. Isn't that interesting? No? Well, it was just about the most exciting thing to happen today. posted at 4:29 PM Friday, August 22, 2003 I'm not the only one who posts cloud photos Friederich, over at 2blowhards, has posted a couple of beautiful landscapes with clouds... I thought they were paintings at first. posted at 10:51 PM Damn, that's a big tree Spent Sunday afternoon out at Krause Springs for my brother's birthday. Here, my other brother and his family pose in a giant (still living) Cypress tree. posted at 2:58 PM Happy Birthday, Mom She's the little un. posted at 2:49 PM New view Moved offices at work yesterday. Traded an uninterrupted view of the sky to the north for a view of trees (Spanish Oak?) and sky to the south. Maybe I'll be able to do some birdwatching while I work. UPDATE: I asked our resident tree expert, and the trees outside my windows are a type of Red Oak called Shumard Oak. Well, I ain't never heered of such a thing. posted at 11:06 AM Wednesday, August 20, 2003 India Temple Shrine Speaking of Shriners, you can't beat the welcoming message and background music at India Temple Shrine's website. Further reading: 10 things about shriners: "Ten confusing things about Shriners. " Still, the best photo I've found is on the DK's album posted below. posted at 11:25 AM Tuesday, August 19, 2003 Shriner kayaker Finally got to do a little downriver paddling Saturday. And got to try out a playboat a little. Not that I felt comfortable playing. Didn't do much more than shown in the pic. That funny little boat with big ol' me in it makes me think of the Shriners. posted at 9:15 PM old punker doin' yoga Went to biofeedback AND yoga today. Do I have to turn in my punk rock membership now? Or did I forfeit that when I lived past 30 (and 40)? Flexible or merely bent and twisted? I've been listening to The Stooges' Fun House with my coffee every morning. Damn fine way to get the day going. Even better than the Sun salutation. "I say oh my and boo hoo." [Whoops! That's from 1969, on the first Stooges album... not 1970, on Fun House. I've been listening to both of 'em.] posted at 9:02 PM Saturday, August 16, 2003 Love not war Beautiful! Photo by Stefan Wray, in The Austin Chronicle posted at 10:17 AM your email account is about to expire So this morning I get an email that looks like it's from the admin of my email account. It got me for a split-second, because my VMS account expired (the old VMS server was retired) a couple of months ago. But I knew it was a fake. For one thing, I just yesterday learned how to write a simple script to email anyone from any address. I toyed with the idea of sending John (co-worker and kayaking bud) an email from our director... but thought better of that idea. But if you want an email from the pres, you just let me know. (I'm joking you. I don't wanna.) However, any email from my admin would've had a PGP key. The thing that's disturbing about this one - obviously it had a virus attachment that looked like more information on my beloved email account, my lifeline to the world, y'know - is just that: folks are so obsessed and identified with their email account. It's just the sort of message that'll cause you to momentarily lose your head and click on the virus. (I have a Mac at home, so it wouldn't have done anything, but still.) It's just so much more likely to be opened than a special funny game. Don't. posted at 9:32 AM Friday, August 15, 2003 Blue Man Group Blue Man Group might possibly have been responsible for the blackouts. They certainly used an awful lot of electricity last night. It was quite a spectacle. And I haven't laughed so hard since last month when Mark Hosler of Negativland was here. Cameras were forbidden, but there were lots of phone cameras. Here's my phone capture of blueness. You can see why people shouldn't be worried about these little things... yet. posted at 10:46 AM blackout New Yorker's site only has this to say: "This site has been taken down by the blackout in the Northeast of the US. It will return as soon as possible." And some of the blogs I read regularly are not online. Woostercollective in NYC is online... so maybe their ISP isn't. I hadn't even thought about where wood s lot might be geographically located - other than Canada, which is rather large - but I think it must be an Ottawa-area blog and still offline. Yikes! CNN sez there's looting going on there. posted at 10:40 AM Thursday, August 14, 2003 Perseid Saw one solitary meteor in an hour of looking up. Mars is still shining bright. Lovely night out. posted at 4:38 AM Wednesday, August 13, 2003 Google and Unix dreams Yuck. More obsessive-repetitive dreams of the 'net and Unix. I'm not even sure they could be called dreams. It's like a twilight state where I do the same Unix command over and over and over - this morning it was 'dfshares' which is just a Sun (Solaris) command to see what file systems are shared on a local or remote system. The other one was a fruitless search on Google. Can't remember what I was searching for. "But I still haven't found what I'm looking for." Anyone else have internet dreams? Tell me. posted at 8:48 AM Tuesday, August 12, 2003 Full moon insomnia The full moon woke me from dreams of the internet. It was beaming full on through the open window. 2 hours later and I'm still awake. I'm sure the pasta didn't help. Read for an hour. Reading Oliver Sacks' Seeing Voices, about the world of the deaf. Quite an interesting book. Went outside to look at the moon, and Mars was big 'n' bright, as promised. Did a search on dreams of the internet, and found only references to The Bubble and financial dreams being dashed. Surely other people dream of the web. Maybe I'm not framing my search correctly. Found one, kind of. Mine are more abstract, in a way. About negotiating or navigating a path or line of thought, but also about the 'code,' the thing beneath the thing on top. Like seeing the subtext of a text as clearly as the text. Dunno. I guess they're kind of obsessive-compulsive. Like anything repetitive that you do during the day, being repeated ad nauseum in your dreams. I remember my first job, as a sacker at the neighborhood grocery, I'd dream of bagging groceries all night long. So now I dream of surfing the web or checking stats or writing html or php. Wait a minute, I'm not dreaming! It's real. Oh, no! I'm blogging in my sleep. Help me! posted at 4:19 AM Saturday, August 09, 2003 Lightning bug The weather blog continues. Experimented with lightning photos last night. I'm quick. Snappin' lightning as it struck. Actually, I cheated. These are video captures. And we didn't get squat in the rain department. Just a nice lightning show. posted at 10:04 AM Friday, August 08, 2003 The weather blog Well, it's been at least a few days since I posted a photo of clouds and only a couple of hours since I posted the outrageous temperatures we've been experiencing... but, holy moly, now it looks like thunderstorms. Yeeeehaw. Maybe I'll be 'yakin' sooner than I thought. posted at 8:03 PM Amazon is smooth And speaking of Ms. Winer, she posted a link to THE ultimate computer accessory. (La ultima!) I want it bad. posted at 7:46 PM 109 Beats That Even hotter today. Good to know there's no such thing as GlobalWarmin'. posted at 3:51 PM Thursday, August 07, 2003 107° F One hundred and seven degrees Fahrenheit today. That's fairly hot. CORRECTION: Headlines this morning reported 108° F. (That's 44° C). Even hotter than 107°. I feel sorry for folks that had to work outside. Like the roofers across the street. Egads. posted at 9:21 PM Wednesday, August 06, 2003 Lake paddlin' Got out and did a little paddlin' 'round the lake yesterday after work. Felt good to be out on the water. My post about being an ex-kayaker made me do it. But it's still been since February since my last whitewater kayaking trip. Will it ever rain again? Will there ever be Texas whitewater again? posted at 3:03 PM Tuesday, August 05, 2003 Lifestyle Buying tickets to The Blue Man Group online yesterday, I had to complete a little survey of my interests before the thing would let me purchase. Choices included the usual: comedy, blues, country, rockcanroll, and... lifestyle. I wasn't sure what sort of performance or music 'lifestyle' was, but I clicked it. I tried to see the Blue ones in NYC years ago, but it was costly and/or sold out, I can't remember which; so I'll see their touring clones. Gerry tells me there are many Blue Men touring the world, not the 'real' Blue Man Group (that I probably would've seen in NYC back when). Can't imagine if rockcanroll bands tried to do that! Well, it's not Robert Plant, but he knows all the songs and he can fit into Plant's pants. posted at 9:30 AM Monday, August 04, 2003 Colorado kayak photos John asked me to post his photos of his kayaking trip to Colorado on my kayaking photos page, so I did. I seem to be an ex-kayaker now, and that's a bit upsetting. posted at 4:33 PM Friday, August 01, 2003 Friends releasing other people's music Two friends have in the past two weeks let me know of new releases of old music that they have been working on. Nick, in Exeter, UK, who has been keeping me apprised of the trials and tribulations of working with tortured genius, has finally brought to the world some (mostly) previously unheard music by one of his all-time fave bands, The Wild Swans. From Liverpool, same era (early 80's) and similar sound to Teardrop Explodes and Echo and the Bunnymen. I have the CD, and it is very nice. If you liked those better known Liverpool bands, you'll like this one. It'll take you back, even if you'd never heard it before, as was the case with me. Dave, in Melbourne, AU, has been working on his own label, Lexicon Devil, and is re-releasing stuff he feels didn't get enough exposure first time around. I haven't heard any of it (yet!), but it doesn't sound like stuff you'd put in the cd-changer with The Wild Swans. Dave's a writin' fool (who would have a highly amusing blog, if he had one). Check out his crazed descriptions of the music he's releasing, like "bong-rattling riffs" & "truly inspired, ungodly, riot-inducing racket." posted at 4:54 PM sensory deprivation Took a little time off from work for some sensory deprivation. I'm a master of sleep deprivation, but thought I'd try something different. Spent an hour and a half in a Samadhi floatation tank. I hadn't floated in, let's see... over 20 years. I liked it. It won't be another 20 years. In fact, it might be next week. I've been trying to get around to making an appointment for awhile, as floating fits in well with the neurofeedback training I've been doing. Floating is all about Theta brainwaves. Meditation, y'know. It took me awhile to get used to it. I guess it's like anything unfamiliar. I kinda had the same feeling I have with insomnia... I just couldn't shut down. But after awhile, I got in to a good theta state. It'll be interesting to see if I get more adept at getting into an altered state. I sure as hell didn't turn into a crazed blood-thirsty animal, as in the movie, Altered States. Bummer. posted at 4:24 PM